And today's translated pick is Akissi: More Tales of Mischief by Marguerite Abouet and Mathieu Sapin. This collection covers issues 4 - 6, originally published in French between 2013 and 2015. Translated by Marie Bedrune and published in English by Flying Eye Books in 2019.
Content notes for some gender and sexuality policing, childhood rivalry, mischief and mishap.
And today's Black Youtuber goes to Aishyo, a media reviewer I subscribed to just a few months ago I've really enjoyed their perspective on movies, anime, and video games. They've been working at this for at least 9 years now, and they have a lot of interesting thoughts to share.
Circling back to the title at hand, I know I've talked a lot about Abouet already - so as we do, I'll send you on to a fuller bio in my early reviews of Aya.
This is my first time reading a Mathieu Sapin illustrated comic though, so according to Europe Comics dot com "Born in 1974 in Dijon, Mathieu Sapin studied the decorative arts in Strasbourg, where he created Supermurgeman, one of his favorite characters, for a school magazine. An illustrator of children’s books and an author, he has written around forty books across all genres, and is a member of the National Society of Comics with Christophe Blain, Riad Sattouf, and Joann Sfar. On the advice of Lewis Trondheim, Sapin got into illustrated documentary."
Keywords that came to mind reading Akissi? Adventure, schooling, soccer, community, neighbourhoods, babies, favored child, and new kids.
Flipping over the book, the description reads "Akissi is back with more outrageous stories, there's never a dull moment when she's around! Akissi is the definition of a true adventurer, nothing can stop her - not even a magic potion that will give her nightmares! Join her as she starts a new year at school and tackles very scary teachers, an even scarier witch doctor and meets her nemesis in the classroom."
TLDR besides a few bumps I found this book extremely charming. I would say that despite dealing with some pretty serious topics, this book will likely come across as a bit childish for some older readers. Not a bad thing at all, just in contrast to something more all ages maybe. Despite having a different illustrator, this companion series felt like it fit perfectly in beside Aya. Sapin does a good job capturing both the magic and pettiness of childhood, and everything in between.
Obviously Abouet, myself and Akissi are coming from some very drastically different view points, making it a bit difficult to go much beyond the observation point when it came to representation. Which I am generally comfortable with, but wanted to flag and chew on a bit.
Kicking things off with sexuality and gender, as I often do; the bumps that might be a bit jarring for some of us came in chapter five, Yucky Day, where Akissi asks what makes a real girl and then tries to non consensually kiss another girl. Despite the largely biological answers given to the former question, the context of there being no seemingly trans people involved just a short bit about how girls can do anything (including play football) just not pee standing up; this seems more like ignorance rather then hate. But it could still have a jarring impact so I did want to bring it up. With the latter attempted/unwelcome apparently same sex kiss, I feel a bit more confident in saying this is just kids being childish because Abouet did include positive gay representation in her Aya series. Again, not to say that that discounts any impact it might have. But Akissi gets up to a lot of mischief and is obviously set up as a flawed and petty character to entertain but not to be emulated.
Hashtag media literacy.
Disability came up in a similar way. About halfway through the collection a new child joins Akissi's class and she immediately takes a strong dislike to her. I could certainly relate to that point, I hated my childhood BFF when I first met her with a passion. This classmate, Sido, also happens to be missing a leg and uses crutches to get around. Despite Akissi's immediate dislike, going so far as to steal Sido's crutches, the rest of the class immediately accept Sido as a friend and playmate and go to great lengths to get her crutches back. Sido shows great skill at ballet and eventually Akissi gets over herself and they also become friends. The final story includes all the kids coming together and getting a wooden leg made because they think it will help her.
Obviously I am not the final, or any kind of judge of this representation. Is Sido just a tool for character development? To be fair, she is developed as much as any of the none Akissi characters to my mind. Considering Sido seemed to be fairly happy the way she was, it seems unfortunate that the other kids stuck their noses into her business like that. The mobility aid representation seemed good; it's certainly a rare occurrence for my reviews. What do y'all think?
Class, while perhaps not directly discussed, the having and lacking of money does come up a bit with how Akissi always seem to be getting more money from her father then her siblings.
And while Abouet seems pretty clear about how growing up in an African country (either freshly independent from France or just about to be) inspired her to write both Aya and Akissi, race did not seem to be a focus of the book itself. Which is fair.
Overall I will go with rating this book four out of five stars. Really fun to read and really interesting to dig in a bit further. I think that if this book sounds the least bit interesting, after all my waffling, I would highly recommend you pick it up.